Hey Stevie, start with ‘I’m sorry’ and go from there

Stephen Harper owes Canadians an explanation and now would be a good time to offer it.

How did a lawyer twice convicted of fraud, who went to jail for 18 months for stealing from his own clients, who was charged with influence peddling in 2012, and is now facing three new counts of illegal lobbying and another of influence peddling – how did such a talented guy get to sit at the right hand of power in the Prime Minister’s Office?

Logic suggests that there are only a few possible explanations:

Did officials in the PCO who did the vetting simply blow it when it came to Carson’s multiple convictions – 1982 and 1990, plus his bankruptcy?

Did the RCMP just drop the ball on his security check?

Did Carson lie about his past crimes?

Or did Carson’s manager in the PMO override the security check, as is possible? And who was that manager, the chief of staff of the day, or the Stephen Harper himself?

Some of these possibilities have been addressed. Carson says the government knew about his criminal record – all of it. The PM asserts that he knew about the initial fraud conviction from 1982, but not the second one – as if that explains anything. So one stretch in jail is okay, but a second fraud conviction and bankruptcy is not?

There is another matter Stephen Harper has to explain about Bruce Carson. Why would he entrust the development of a national energy strategy for the entire country to a disbarred lawyer? Why did he get him the top job at the new Canada School of Energy and Environment at the University of Calgary – and $15 million in taxpayers dollars to get the place going?

Carson has zero scientific experience and suddenly he’s got 7,000 students and 260 researchers looking to him for leadership. What leadership? This is a guy who thinks a clean planet is an unrealistic idea. This is a guy who thinks the tar sands’ effluent is fit to drink.

And on what basis did the Harper government give another company chaired by Carson — Carbon Management Canada — another $25 million in federal funding?

As a matter of fact, Carson’s email requesting a grant under the Centres of Excellence program arrived at the Department of Natural Resources while Carson was busy helping prepare the 2009 budget in a special, short-term return to the PMO. Harper’s then chief of staff Guy Giorno reportedly blew a gasket and called in the Ethics Commissioner.

On an already underwhelming report card, the biggest F on Stephen Harper’s record so far has been his utter failure to “clean up” Ottawa, after riding into town like the Lone Ranger in the wake of the Ad Sponsorship Scandal.

Instead of cleaning things up, he will leave the system dirtier than he found it. Consider the personnel choices:

Nigel Wright — fired by the PM for doing a deal the PM says he would never have approved, the $90,000 cheque to Senator Mike Duffy;

Arthur Porter — his choice to be watch dog for CSIS, in jail in Pan-ama fighting extradition to Canada where he faces multiple fraud charges;

Dean del Mastro — his former parliamentary secretary, up on charges of election cheating, and pleading not guilty;

Beyond poor draft choices, Harper has damaged the public service by deeply politicizing everything – including the Privy Council Office.

Countless interviews with senior public servants, officers of parliament, and tribunal heads who believe they were unjustly treated by the prime minister or their own minister come with the same punch line. They did what they were supposed to do under such circumstances; they appealed to their proper protector, the Clerk of the Privy Council. None of them got help from the country’s top civil servant, and all saw a big change in the PCO.

One very senior head of a quasi-judicial body asked for a meeting over a very serious matter but the Clerk of the day did not oblige. Instead, he sent underlings, his chief legal counsel, and a representative from the Machinery of Government side. They listened silently, nodding occasionally, and offered the embattled public servant no help.

So how can it be that Stephen Harper’s key political operatives, even when they no longer work for him, do not have problems reaching the most powerful public office holders in the land? Consider the circumstances of Bruce Carson’s latest charges.

On November 16, 2009, former Harper advisor Carson sent an email to the Clerk of the Privy Council asking for a meeting the following week. “Will be in Ottawa from Monday to Wednesday inclusive next week – you got a half hour for a visit. bc.” Wayne Wouters, whom Harper had appointed Clerk of the Privy Council just four and a half months earlier replied: “Sure. Set it up with my office.”

A second email from Carson to the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources, Cassie Doyle, informed the senior public servant that he had had one of his regular meetings with the Clerk, and spent most of his time talking about energy. “I brought him up to speed on various initiatives I am involved in – in this area – especially the so-called “think tank” one that I wrote to you about a month or so ago after a meeting in Winnipeg.”

At the time, Carson headed up the Canada School of Energy and Environment and worked with a group called the Energy Policy Institute of Canada. Since he himself was not yet five years out from the date that his own government employment ended, it was illegal for him to be dealing with public office holders over the development or amendment of any government policy; the awarding of any grant; or the arranging of a meeting between a public office holder and any other person.

Why was he able to do that? Carson’s passport to the highest offices in the land bears Stephen Harper’s face.

So do tell us Mr. Prime Minister, besides a criminal record, a taste for young escorts, and an alleged yen for unregistered lobbying, how did Bruce Carson come to sit by your side – and why did you give him so much power and so much of the people’s money?

Sadly, most Canadians who vote won’t know about this guy and others like him and the other destructive actions of the Harper government because they don’t really care unless it affects them personally. Harper knows this and therefore feels he is free to act in any way he likes.

Does anyone really believe that Harper didn’t know about Carson’s second conviction and does anyone really believe that any of his crimes would have produced a different appointee? I don’t think so. Ever since the Harper party basically got away with cheating in the 2006 elections Harper appears to believe in his omnipotence and he acts that out every day he’s in office.

Repost from Chris Hedges (Pulitzer Prize winner and former war
correspondent for the New York Times) on Canada’s right-wing neocon Prime
Minister Stephen Harper:

Harper is a poster child for corporate malfeasance and
corporate power, just sort of dismantling everything that’s good about Canada. So he’s the kind of species that rises to
political power and is utterly subservient to corporate interests at the
expense of the citizenry.

Love Chris Hedges! He says it straight with insight and intelligence. He hit the nail on the head with Harper.

When the Cons are finally turfed from office, I imagine the repair work needed to fix what has been broken will reveal that this will have been the most fiscally incompetent government in Canada’s history. So much for their selling line of being the only ones really committed to fiscal responsibilty!

It was a fair question. The sentence left some room for interpretation and I am quite sure most of Mr. Harper’s besotted knuckledraggers probably thought you were talking about Harris. So thanks for clearing it up.

Cons convicted of election fraud in 2006, with over $200k paid in fines, but not a single day of jail time for this major crime.

Cons convicted of election fraud in 2008, with Dean Del Maestro charged, and Peter Penashue “doing the honourable thing” and resigning in the face of clear violations and reports of illegality.

Election fraud confirmed in 2011, with foreign newspapers calling the election “a sham” and “rigged”; CIMS database confirmed the source of the data used to perpetrate the fraud, which is encrypted, password-locked, access-logged, and access is restricted to high-ranking Cons only.

“Computer records show campaign volunteer John White downloaded the lists of opposition supporters that may have been used to make the call. White told investigators in 2012 he could not recall why he downloaded them.” from the National Post’s article, “Former campaign worker granted immunity after he gives evidence in ‘Pierre Poutine’ robocalls case.”

The guilty have been rewarded, enabled, empowered, and allowed to run amuck since at least 2006. We require a severe and thorough audit of government, and Harper’s allies in the private sector must be uncovered and punished.

So the P.M. didn’t know about Carson’s second conviction? If only there were a way of checking such things, an organization that could simultaneously protect the P.M. from criminals while actually knowing who the criminals are. Does R.C.M.P. ring a bell?

Shoot I was expecting something today from MIchael about his NDP pals. There is after all an Ont. election on, which is of much more interest to folks. I was hoping he’d enlighten us about why the NDP power pack are dumping all over their leader Andrea? Failing that perhaps he’d give us the inside info on why many of the Liberal elite are doing the same thing to their Shiny Pony, who’s apparently lost some of his glow. C’mon Michael it’s called relevance. Nobody cares about a has-been who never really was and no, I’m not alluding to you, in case you take this personally. But then again, if the shoe fits etc.

Not everyone is going to be effected by the Ontario elections and not all of us care about them either. The illegitimate Harper government on the other hand is and has been effecting us all. Go write your own opinion piece about the Ontario elections.

I suspect he was a social misfit from his early years and it continues to this day; (think his comments about his “enemies” at Flaherty’s funeral – truer words never spoken. He has no social graces and no obvious insight into people. He is a very sad spectacle.

How conservatives vote/voted support/supported one of the biggest fool/idiot/incompetent/arrogant assholes in Canadian history is beyond me. Put harpers record/accomplishments/scandals/ criminal charges/ up against any other PM and see the tiny male apendaged emporer has no clothes

It’s amazing to me that Harper, who was the king of pious indignation when the Liberals ruled, has knowingly surrounded himself with climate change deniers and con men. He used to believe in recall when he was a Reformer. He has since made me a believer too.

“It’s amazing to me that Harper, who was the king of pious indignatio” When someone speaks so perfect and says things to please everyone before he became a PM, and not one public error you know he’s lying. This man was groomed since he was wearing his leather shorts from Bavaria.This election coming up will be a concerted effort to demonize his opponents and avoid anything Conservative. Harper has nothing in all his years as PM, a record that he can excite people with, so more lies will be forth coming. Its so sad that no matter how deviant this man is, he will be looked after by his friends in The Bilderberg Group. He has done what was asked of him and will be rewarded.

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